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WHO’s First Social Media Effort: Making Hospitals Disaster-Safe

I got an email from Mari (M4ID_Mari on Twitter) on behalf of the World Health Organization’s (WHO) Emergencies and Humanitarian Action team in South East Asia, based in New Delhi about WHO’s first social media-driven effort, aiming to engage 1 million people in the issue of making hospitals safe in disasters. From WHO

“Floods, tsunamis, earthquakes, cyclones – the WHO South-East Asia Region is particularly vulnerable to natural disasters. In 1996-2005, such events led to the deaths of more than half a million people in this region. This makes up 58% of the total number of people killed worldwide due to natural disasters.

Hospitals are lifelines in the aftermath of a disaster, when large numbers of people are critically injured or vulnerable. It is particularly vital that they remain intact and functional to save lives. In addition to treating disaster victims, hospitals must also quickly resume treatment of everyday emergencies and routine care. When hospitals are damaged or destroyed during disasters, it has a social, economic as well as health impact. Hospitals and health facilities are at the core of the structure of every community. They also protect health workers and the most vulnerable people – the sick – all the time. When these are damaged, it can have a psychological impact on the entire community. Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at scan man's notes*

When Puberty Ends

I heard a 23-year-old woman complain: “I must be getting old when 11:00 at night is late.” It got me thinking.

It turns out that the explanation for why teens are natural night owls has recently been elucidated. They can’t help it — they just don’t get tired until way later in the evening. Then, of course, their bodies want to stay asleep well into the next morning in order to feel sufficiently rested. Since most of them are stuck with the artificial structure of school hours, they’re screwed — and condemned to suffer constant fatigue from cumulative sleep deprivation. Old news.

Then I started wondering about the back end of this phenomenon. Even though our American “youth culture” attributes great coolness to late-night happenings, since this pubertal sleep shift is biological, there must come a point at which their pineal glands go back to releasing melatonin at a more reasonable hour. Does 10 years sound about right? I remember not being nearly as enamored of the “all-nighter” by the time medical school rolled around, as opposed to college, where staying up all night was a regular occurrence. Certainly by residency (ages 26 to 30), it was a killer. Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at Musings of a Dinosaur*

For Halloween: “Just A Flesh Wound” Stickers

To promote his new zombie book, “Rise Again,” author Ben Tripp is offering a printable sheet of flesh wounds that, to our relatively trained eyes, are reasonably accurate depictions of what undead flesh wounds would look like. You have to provide your own sticky sheets to print them on. (Note to medical students: Do not stick these on your anatomy cadavers.) Happy Halloween!

SOURCE: “Stickers for Quick Undeadliness: Assorted Zombie Wounds

*This blog post was originally published at Medgadget*

Social Neighborhoods: How Many Can A Doctor Have?

Recently I was speaking to some physicians about social media. As we discussed the evolution of public social platforms and physician-specific networks the question came up: “How many social networks can a doctor have?” In other words, if a doctor dedicates time to Facebook and Twitter, will he or she then also spend time on Sermo, iMedExchange, or Doximity? This is an important question if you’re in the business of attracting doctors to a specific network.

As part of the attention crash, we’re facing the reality of human bandwith. We can only socialize in so many places. I always tell physicians starting out to pick their social spaces carefully. You can only dedicate so much time to social. For me, my attention is spent here on 33 charts and on Twitter. I’ve been tempted to get into podcasting, video and other media, but time is a limited commodity. Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at 33 Charts*

How Do You Hide $100 From A Doctor?

How do you hide $100 from a surgeon? Put it in the patient’s chart, next to the labs.

How do you hide $100 from an orthopedist? Put it in a textbook.

How do you hide $100 from a neurosurgeon? Tape it to his kid.

How do you hide $100 from an OB/GYN? Tape it to the patient’s head.

How do you hide $100 from an internist? Stick it under the patient’s bandage.

How do you hide $100 from a radiologist? Give it to the patient.

How do you hide $100 from a cardiologist? You can’t.

How do you hide $100 from a plastic surgeon? You definitely can’t.

— Compliments of The Happy Hospitalist

*This blog post was originally published at EverythingHealth*

Latest Interviews

IDEA Labs: Medical Students Take The Lead In Healthcare Innovation

It’s no secret that doctors are disappointed with the way that the U.S. healthcare system is evolving. Most feel helpless about improving their work conditions or solving technical problems in patient care. Fortunately one young medical student was undeterred by the mountain of disappointment carried by his senior clinician mentors…

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How To Be A Successful Patient: Young Doctors Offer Some Advice

I am proud to be a part of the American Resident Project an initiative that promotes the writing of medical students residents and new physicians as they explore ideas for transforming American health care delivery. I recently had the opportunity to interview three of the writing fellows about how to…

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Latest Book Reviews

Book Review: Is Empathy Learned By Faking It Till It’s Real?

I m often asked to do book reviews on my blog and I rarely agree to them. This is because it takes me a long time to read a book and then if I don t enjoy it I figure the author would rather me remain silent than publish my…

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The Spirit Of The Place: Samuel Shem’s New Book May Depress You

When I was in medical school I read Samuel Shem s House Of God as a right of passage. At the time I found it to be a cynical yet eerily accurate portrayal of the underbelly of academic medicine. I gained comfort from its gallows humor and it made me…

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Eat To Save Your Life: Another Half-True Diet Book

I am hesitant to review diet books because they are so often a tangled mess of fact and fiction. Teasing out their truth from falsehood is about as exhausting as delousing a long-haired elementary school student. However after being approached by the authors’ PR agency with the promise of a…

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